The Process

Here is a top-level overview (Jamie is laughing at me for using these words - totally a Gary post) of the process we are going through in order to adopt internationally.

We have to complete a California homestudy. This involves filling out lots of forms, getting fingerprinted at the local police station, being interviewed by a social worker, and having a home safety inspection. The homestudy agency uses all this information about us to make a determination about our suitability to adopt. Assuming no problems arise out of all this, a final report is written up by the homestudy agency documenting their findings and conclusions. We are currently complete for all this except the final report is still being written.

The dossier is another big stack of paperwork. This one includes the final homestudy report as well as quite a few other forms and documents of various kinds. Everything must be notarized. In addition, there is a requirement to complete a minimum of ten hours of adoption/parenting training, per requirements of the Hague Convention. When all this is completed and reviewed by our adoption agency, it is sent to the U.S State Department for authentication. After this is done, it is ready to go to Ethiopia. The dossier basically contains everything the Ethiopian government will know about us, and it is what they will use to approve or reject us for adopting one of their children. We are nearly complete with our dossier paperwork now - we need the homestudy report, one notarized doctor's report, and we need to complete and notarize our letter to the Ethiopian government requesting adoption of an Ethiopian child. We hope to have all this complete and ready for review in another week or two.

A third leg to this process is the paperwork for the USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services). You can't just go and bring a foreign-born person into the U.S. without more stacks of paper. The USCIS requires more fingerprints, more moolah, and a review of the homestudy report to give a preliminary approval for our bringing in an orphan from outside the country. We are just waiting on the homestudy report at this time. There will be more forms later when we are closer to our travel time.

OK, so once all the front-end paperwork is complete and submitted to Ethiopia, we wait for a referral. The referral will consist of information (perhaps all that is known) about an orphaned or abandoned child. This will include pictures, sometimes video, medical history, family history if known, as well as personal tidbits if known. We will be requesting a reasonably healthy girl, age 0-18 months. We don't know how long it will take to get a referral once our paperwork is submitted, but other adopting families seem to have had times varying from a month or two to four or five months. Our agency quotes three months as typical, but nothing is guaranteed of course.

Orphaned/abandoned children in Ethiopia typically start out in the state-run orphanages. Once we agree to a referred child, that child will be removed from the orphanage (hooray!) and placed in foster care. From this point, it could be another month or more before we can arrange to travel to pick up the child!

We're anxious to meet that little one, whomever she may be!